Normally, new neighbors just introduce themselves to you or leave cookies at your doorstep.
However, when you’re black, new neighbors can “call the Police on you to report a burglary for you just moving into your own apartment, where you pay the rent.”
Darren Martin found that out the hard way.
Martin, after working for D.C. for several years with the Obama Administration, moved back to New York last week to a 5-story walk-up on the Upper West Side of the City.
With moving boxes in hand, the responding Officers weren’t buying Darren’s little “I-live-here-now–and-I-am-just-moving-into-my-own-place” story.
In Martin’s video, you can literally hear the Dispatcher say: “somebody was trying to break in the door with a possible weapon.”
Martin is simultaneously and incredulously standing there, in a beater, with boxes in his hands…
Unsurprisingly, a later investigation determined that there was nothing criminal about Martin carrying his own boxes from the hallway into his own new apartment.
Fortunately, Martin knows the drill here:
As a black man when you’re in an all-white environment, you’re cognizant of that…I have to say I found it kinda symbolic. [It’s] like welcome to the neighborhood.
One of the Cops even had the nerve to jokingly ask Martin: “How many likes are you getting for this…” (in response to Martin recording the incident via Facebook live)
This is going to be a particularly tough one for black folks to navigate their way around, but apparently, we’re adding “moving into your own apartment” to the ever-growing list of “things that you cannot do, while being black.”
Flip the page to see the video of the cops stopping Darren Martin to investigate him for a burglary for moving into his own apartment.